The Home Service Expert Podcast - Building a Fence Around Your Clients

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Brian Kaskavalciyan is the Co-founder and lead marketing strategist for gFour Marketing group. He is also the author of the book, “How to Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less.” Brian’s passion involves helping people get more repeat customers through relationship marketing. In this episode, we talked about relationship marketing, hiring, customer service...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello,

and I'm here today with Brian Kaskovalsian. Perfect. I have a tough name, but Brian, I'm really excited. I came onto your podcast. I want to do a quick introduction, tell everybody where you came from. You're the co-founder and lead marketing strategist for Jeeper Marketing Group. You started that in 2008 to present. You've got the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. I was on there. It's an amazing podcast.

Everybody needs to check that out. And you bought and sold several home service businesses, including some bathroom remodeling stuff. Tell me how it's going today and tell me a little bit about what you do and how you got to where you're at. Well, thanks, Tommy, for having me. I appreciate it. So, I mean, what we do today is really we help home service companies and home remodeling companies just be more successful and make more money. We specifically focus on helping them grow relationships. And, you know, my background is, you mentioned there, my background has been in home improvement for, God, I hate to even say it now, but it's like going on almost 30 years. I started when I was 21 as a commissioned salesperson selling kitchens and bathrooms. So I've done a

lot with remodeling and home services. And now I just help companies be more successful. Yeah. And that's kind of a loaded statement, I think. And there's so many things I think you do. You've got how to double your profits in Months or Less. And you authored the book. I'm looking at it right now. It's getting great reviews. It's available on Amazon. It looks like it's $18.95. I'm definitely going to pick it up. Tell me a little bit about the book and what you talk about, the methodology in there. So, you know, what's interesting, Tommy, is when I sold the, so I created a company in 2000 called Handyman Network. And we basically built it as a franchise, kind of like what you're doing with your A1 Garage, although you're doing a much better job of it than I did. But I went on,

I went and I franchised it. And then after that, I kind of sold the franchise company, got out of it. And I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And so I took some time off and I went and wrote a book because my mentor, Dan Kennedy says, you know, everybody's got to have a book. So I went and I wrote this book and I was just, you know, the whole idea at the beginning was just to use it as a business card, just to say, hey, you know, the whole idea at the beginning was just to use it as a business card, just to say, hey, you know, I'm coming in here. I can help you with your company. You know, people were asking me to do consulting work. I didn't want to just show up with a business card. So I created the ultimate business card, which was this book. And what's funny, Tommy, is like,

at first I was like, you know, and I didn't think that much of it. I didn't think, I thought, you know, these are just some basic principles of marketing and, and mindset and how to build a company. And man, it, people, I started to get really, really good feedback on the book. And so now we use it a lot. We, um, it's available on Amazon. I updated it a few years ago. I'm actually working on updating it right now. But the whole idea of the book was just, here's some basic things that you can do that are going to make your business more money.

And without spending a whole lot of money, without spending a whole bunch of time, here are some basic things that any business owner could do to impact their business. Well, now you got me on the edge of my seat because I kind of want to know. Just give me a couple examples. Okay, so here's something interesting that I found out

was as I was with my experience with like with franchisees and being an entrepreneur, one of the things that I, so I put together originally, so right now it's got eight strategies in there. And originally I had like 12 or 13 and I kind of started to pare them back a little bit, but, and I put the strategies in place. All right. But then I thought, man, something here is really missing. If I started to spend a lot of time on, on mindset, on man, if, if, if, if you don't get this part of it, right, all of the other stuff isn't going to, I can give you the best marketing idea in the world, but if you're not coming at it from the right mindset, it's not going to work. And so the whole first section of the book is really all about mindset. It's about,

you know, setting goals. It's about how to look at a customer. You know, most people look at a customer as a transaction, not as a relationship, as the most important thing in the business. And so we have to have a conversation about that. We have to understand kind of what makes a profit in a business. How do you become profitable in a business? Then we could start talking about the strategies of, you know, using only direct response marketing, how to stay in touch with your past customers so they keep coming back and buying more. I even put in there, the last

strategy in there is actually how to use education, meaning like a book or a free report or something like that, to get more leads and to really separate yourself from the competition. Does that answer the question? Yeah, no, that's great. I just wanted kind of some insight into it. And I know that you've done, look, there's a difference, I think, between home service and home improvement. Do you see a difference in those two?

Absolutely. Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about what in your mind defines each one of those and what brings them together? What separates them? Well, home improvement. So, you know, most of my clients, probably 80, 85% of my clients are in the replacement space, meaning windows, roofing, siding, even one-day bath goes in there. And then about 20% of my business is home service companies like plumbing and HVAC. The big differences really are in the windows are kind of a, it's a bigger ticket item. And it's something that a lot of people think,

oh, we're just going to go in there. It's kind of a one-time event. It's not, but it's a one-time event. That's how they kind of see it. Whereas with home services, like with plumbing and HVAC and like, you know, garage, like what you're in, is it's more of a, I got to get in there the first time so I can get in there the second time so I can get in there the third time so I can get in there the fourth time so I get a customer for life. The main difference is with like roofing, windows, and siding, you need those people once every five years, seven years, 10 years. Whereas with plumbing, HVAC, garage door, you need those people all the time. And so when you're setting the company up, when you're setting up your marketing systems,

when you're setting up your sales systems, when you're setting up your delivery systems, it's a little bit different in how you set those things up. Yeah, I think, you know, I bumped into a guy. His name is Austin. He owns a company called Moxie and it's a extermination company and bumped into him two weeks ago at the gas station. And I probably hang out with him twice a year. We'll go out to lunch and he goes, Tommy, he goes, I'm kicking myself in the butt, man. I go, what happened? He goes he goes dude I finally did you know what what I've talked to him about what a lot of his colleagues have been talking about his email marketing yeah he said using it to go after my past list he

goes my past customers he goes I only got 2,500 customers but I have 6,500 ones that fell off at some point he goes, the ROI is in the thousands and thousands of percentile. Yeah. Because dude, I've never made so much money getting so many customers back. And how many times have you heard somebody say that? And trust me, I'm looking, I can only look in the mirror and say this, you know, truthfully is I failed a million times over again. We're doing a good job now, but email marketing and getting the customers back to buy more and reminding them of who you are

and just getting that into a planned cycle, making sure you have a good opt-in in the front line to make sure you're able to be compliant with it. But how important is that to a business? It's critical, especially if you're in home services. Look, the exterminator, the plumbing, HVAC, electrical, garage door, your job. So once you make a lead, your job is to go and convert that lead now into a customer. But now your job is, how do I immediately after you provide that first service, your job immediately is, how do I get back again? And then once you complete the second service, it's how do I get back again? And then how do I get back again? You want to get in four times as quickly as you possibly can, because at four

times, now you're set. Now they're used to you. They know who you are. They know what solution you provide and they're used to it now. They're used to calling you. And what most companies do, which is an enormous mistake. And believe me, I did the same thing. I did the exact same thing. I can tell you story after story. But what most companies do is they go in, they do that first service, then they run to the next one and their thinking is either, I'm just too busy to wrap my arm around that customer or they're naive and arrogant enough to believe that, oh, when they need me again, they'll call. That was one conversation, Tommy, that I would, if a franchisee said that to me, I'd want to like pick up the phone and throw it across the room. It would make me nuts.

It's not their job. It's not our customer's job to remember us. It's our job to continually remind them of the value we bring to their life, the solutions we provide and how to get a hold of us. You're expecting them to come back to you on their own they will but they're not coming back anywhere near as often as you can get them to come back that is so interesting how did you get that four times is there a study or something how does that yeah yeah yeah yeah each time you get back in the house the number um i don't have it right in front of me, but the number of like how they'll come back and

buy from you again, it goes up exponentially. And four is kind of like the magic number. I love that. That's interesting. I want to, I want to research that. So, you know, I'm going through my A1 garage door business and what I've kind of come to the conclusion here in the past few weeks is I am probably the most aggressive on offense of anybody I've ever met. I mean, I get more leads than I can handle. I've got better sales. I've got better technology, but I failed dramatically on my defense. And that means the accounting, all my managers have credit cards. And I'm like, why is there 25 Home Depot purchases? I just noticed that I have a really bad defense and it's something that we've been really focusing on. My whole podcast is built on getting more business, keeping them coming back for more. We're really, really good at that, at getting new customers, keeping our customers,

selling more to our customers, marketing, showing up number one on Google, all that stuff. But tell me a little bit about how much you've seen. There's no defense. And I feel like that that's kind of where the shoes I'm in right now, or I've been fixing it. Well, if I can, let me attack that from kind of a different front, if it's okay with you, is this is a numbers-driven business. I mean, look, you can't build the type of organization, just using you as an example, because you're here, you can't build the type of organization that you've built without understanding your numbers. And so many people do this business without understanding their numbers. So I was at, so this is funny, I was at a conference just over the last couple of days. And this guy comes up to me that listens to my podcast, goes on my trainings. And he says to me, you have to tell people to convert their numbers into percentages.

And I'm like, what do you mean by that? Because we talk in percentages, like a lot of times we'll talk about a minimum net of 10%, ideally 15 to 20%. This guy is dealing in absolute numbers and doesn't understand percentages. Most people don't understand what it costs, what it really costs them to create a lead, what it really costs them to convert that lead into a customer, what it really costs to deliver the service or the product that you're installing. And so as a result of that, they don't make anywhere near the money they should make and they don't understand why. They work too hard and they just keep running. So, you know, to your point, I mean, we got to understand the numbers in our business. We got to understand what stuff costs us. Man, numbers are,

it's such a critical thing to understand, you know, numbers in this business. And this is a business of psychology, marketing, and math, right? That's how you figured out, you know, how are you growing your company? You're growing your company by understanding, hey, I can go into this new market. I can create leads at this much. If I acquire a company or I start a new branch, you understand your numbers. Now, as far as what you brought up and all of the different credit cards and all of that, I ain't an accountant, but it seems to me like that's a good place for you to go and look and see if there are maybe some efficiencies there and, and, uh, you know, you can make a few more points on the bottom line.

Well, it's, it's so simple to me. I mean, I just said, guys, I'm taking away all your credit cards. If you've got something you need to buy, buy it on your own credit card and submit it. I mean, we're not talking about changing the company. I mean, if I can move it up a couple thousand bucks a month or something, but I just, little things like that just kind of annoy me. Tighter, a little bit tighter inventory control, which we just rolled out of tighter inventory. It doesn't, there's no passion behind it for me. I'm like, inventory, great books. I'm like, this stuff sucks, but you got to do it. And some people get off on this stuff. I mean, they open every letter, they're talking to the bank, they're

doing this. I'm the opposite. And luckily I got a great team behind me. But you know, one of the things too, that I was just thinking about is, you know, you're absolutely right with the numbers. I mean, I can tell you my payroll percentage as we talk in percentages of revenue, but what I like to look at is a lot of my margin when I talk about my sales. Yeah. Understanding the difference. So many people brag about revenue, but they're not making any money. Right.

I just see that being a big, big failure. But, you know, maybe they just I know a guy, my old roommate that I went to the University of Arizona. Yeah, I got my master's degree old roommate that I went to the University of Arizona. Yeah, I got my master's degree and he was working at, still working at Costco. I mean, they pay them pretty darn good at Costco and he gets a lot of benefits and he's teaching on the side. But he told me he worked at the main one in Phoenix that all the restaurants, the restaurant supply, and he'd say, Tommy, this guy comes in and he buys all the cigarettes.

He closes us out once a week. And he goes, he literally gets to 2% back from Costco and he gets the points on his credit card that he pays with. And he goes, that's how he makes a living. He makes 200 grand a year, plus millions and millions of points. So he gets to travel the world for free all the time. Interesting. It's just kind of funny because I think, you know, I hear a lot of owners go, yeah, I didn't make a ton of money. But if you think about the points and the cash back and stuff, but there's different strategies for different folks. But I'm telling you, nobody

that I've seen exactly like you said, that's super successful, doesn't understand their numbers to the T. I mean, I know the percentage of revenue for payroll. I know cost of goods sold. And what I noticed was very interesting, Brian, is I'm really, really dissecting things pretty hardcore right now and really digging into numbers and understanding why someone with a lower closing ratio is so much higher with average profit per job. And I know that's a little bit deep, but what I mean by that, and I know you know what I'm talking about, Brian, it means for every time my guys stop, they might not close that sale, maybe because it's a new door sale. But the point behind that is I got a guy with a much lower close ratio. He's actually number two average ticket per stop

of net, but number two on the bottom for close ratio. What I learned was not only does he sell a much more profitable item, he goes after and shows customers much more high end things, but he also understands the margin. He knows where we make money. He knows that he makes more money when we have more margin because that's how we've arranged his compensation. So it's astronomically different when I explain this to the other door salesmen of the reason Daniel's able to make so much more money than you guys is because he understands the cost of goods sold. So that's just one example of what you're talking about to say, we've got a much better deal worked out with this vendor.

We get a much better deal worked out with this vendor. We get a much better deal when we buy this package. We get way more money on a bottom line when we saw this particular opener with this keypad and other remote. And he understands that. And when I had him speak about it, it was eye-opening to everybody. And we're talking about millions of dollars a year for the company. I shouldn't say for me. I mean, we're going to spend it on growth, I'm sure. But the point was to make those little inferences or, you know, within the business is huge. And I think you're talking about that as a whole, but these little intricacies of the business are such a huge difference. And Brian's absolutely right when he talks about know your numbers, dig into them. But then I find other people that say, I've got 85 KPIs

and I know exactly this, this, this. And I'm like, dude, you need like five. Let's focus on the first five before you get 85. So if I can just turn the tables here for a second, Tommy, I love that. Point out to everybody that's listening, that whole thing that Tommy just went through, you know, I always say on my podcast, I always say success leaves clues and you could just listen to what he just said and you get a gigantic clue into how Tommy is so successful because as the owner of a business, our job is to say, this is where we're going, have clear cut, you know, kind of goals of this is where we're going to go. And then you have to be the one that kind of drives all of that. Nowhere in any of what you just said was, oh, and then I went out and I installed a garage door

or I went out on a sales call. No, the job of the owner is to be looking and understanding how does our business make money and then go make money. The job of the business is to make money. And a lot of people don't get that. And it's like, I hate to see it. You know, people work too hard in this business to not make money. Well, you know, one of the things that you made me think about is when a company goes public, they got a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders and they have to drive profit. So I think as Google grew, their old motto used to be to do no evil, but they changed that. Not to say they're doing evil, but it said, Hey, we've got this fiduciary responsibility obligation to drive money to our stockholders. So every public company gets that and they go through this

IPO, international stock offering, and they got to go through the process and they've got to deliver profits or they don't get well funded. And as small business owners, we really don't understand that. And I think that's exactly the point you're trying to make is so many people say those. One thing I see, Brian, is people start a business to make a living, not make a profit. And they still are working in the business. And I hate, you know, I'm so every podcast I have and I say it and every other guest I've had says I work on the business, not in the business, but the E-Myth is amazing. So they did a great job. Gerber did amazing, but it's so true. And you know, I'll tell you what, what can home service business entrepreneurs do differently so they don't have to compete

so much on price like all of us tend to do over time? I mean, what can you do differently so it's not always competing on price? Yeah. So today it's all about the customer experience. There's really no longer, you can't really get differentiation anymore through a product. You're not really going to get differentiation through price. You're going to get differentiation through the experience that your customer has with your company. The better the customer experience is, the more you're going to get what I call friendlies, repeat business and referrals. The more repeat business and referrals you get, the less price resistance that you get. And I mean, it's, I hate to say, I mean, it's as simple as that. It's not easy to pull off by no stretch, but it's really is

kind of that simple. And then the other side of it is that you have got to understand a little bit about what you were saying. If I can circle back to that for a minute, you were saying they have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders. Well, what about your stockholders as the small business owner? So I haven't received a paycheck from a company since I was in college, right? And even then I was a commissioned salesperson. My entire adult life, my family has depended on me to create enough value in the marketplace that I make a profit and then I can cover all of the expenses at home. A lot of people in business don't understand that, hey, you have a fiduciary, if you want to call it that, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the people that are at home, to your family.

And not only to your family, but to your people that work with you. If you want to have good people, your business better make money, right? Otherwise, you're not going to keep them and you're not going to attract the good ones. That is something that I think that some people listening right now need to take a deep,

deep look in the mirror and maybe realize that getting advice from the wrong people. And I mentioned this earlier to you, Brian, is on Facebook, the communities, I see a lot of people on whether it's garage doors, you know, I've got a Christmas light business that I'm not super involved in. I'm a small minority owner of it, but I do some consulting and help them over there. But I'm involved in a lot of different things and always doing the podcast and working on my book. But my point is that I just see a lot of people that they're getting advice in all the wrong places. Yeah. And I just go on these things and I'm looking at them going, there are evil companies out there. And the thing that I've learned is why does it make anybody feel better to

bash these companies? Just outdo them. Like what are they doing? Good. I guarantee you every bad company is doing something way better than you. Like I look at some of the bigger garage door companies, my competitors and sometimes they out-market everybody else. Sometimes they book more phone calls. Sometimes they pay their guys a much better compensation and that's why they get the best sales guys. And they go, oh, they're evil.

They don't, don't, don't, don't. And I look at them and I'm like, you don't even, you don't even do any, you still work in the industry every day. This is how you make your money. You don't even have a business. I've in the industry every day. This is how you make your money. You don't even have a business. I've been an employee. I've been a business owner.

And it's just kind of funny to me when you have somebody that's only been an employee trying to give advice to an owner. And doesn't it get frustrating at times for you? You know, because you've been in the same spot. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, I say all the time, if you really want to take your business to the next level, go seek out people that are already there. You know, whatever business, whatever home improvement or home service or home remodeling business you're in, if you can't find somebody

local that's willing to share with you, go into the next major city, call up a few people and say, if you're in the garage door business and you're barely getting by, you're barely doing half a million dollars or a million dollars or whatever the number is, and you want to get to two or 3 million because you want to make three or $400,000, go find a company or somebody that's already done that and go talk with them and ask them, Hey, what do I have to do different? And then when they tell you, go and do it. A guy like Tommy gives you advice, take the advice, go do it. You know, because they've already been there. They've already done that. Why are you going to try and reinvent the wheel?

And why the hell are you, you know, I laughed when you said that earlier, but it's sad about the whole Facebook thing. Why are you wasting your time talking to people that can't help you? All they can do is commiserate with you. If you really want to be successful, go hang out with successful people. It's so true. I go tell my guys when I open up a new market, I cannot be the boots on the ground. I interviewed a guy a while ago about, he's got a ton of franchises and he said, Tommy, the successful franchisees, what they do is their boots on the ground. They are so involved with the community. They're so engaged. And one thing I tell my guys is go find the biggest air conditioning company in town. Go find the biggest roofing company in town. Go find the biggest plumbing company if it's not the same as the HVAC.

I want you to look for the top five companies that you find. I'm talking TV, radio, go through the newspaper, go through your ValPak. I want you to look on Google. And I'm like, I want you to see if you can meet with the owner and their marketing team, find out what's working for them, tell them we're willing and able to give them referrals if we go work on a relationship. But they'll tell you they have no reason. We're not competitors of theirs. So when you get into a market, what works? I'm telling you what's funny is I'm in Albuquerque and we have not, we're doing good in Albuquerque, but the same things that work in Albuquerque are not the same things that work in most of the other markets. It's like a little bit of Napoleon dynamite syndrome in that area or something.

I don't know. But the difference is, if you go talk to those people, they'll actually give you advice and say, look, the only thing that works in this market, I mean, I've seen, I'm in Kingman, Arizona, and they're like, these things are called white sheets and they absolutely murder it. But it took us six months to finally talk to some business owners and realize that. So you just never know until you talk to successful people and they'll tell you, Hey, you buy this. Or sometimes they'll tell you, wait a minute, how much are you paying for that? You should be paying half of that. And that's really great advice, by the way.

Yeah. You know, that reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about relationship marketing. Yeah. Because I want to talk about what are the benefits and explain to me exactly what relationship marketing is to you and how to build that part of the business. So, you know, we talked earlier about how most businesses, I mean, let's not even talk home improvement. Let's just talk most businesses. What they do is they take their customer for granted. And they think that just because somebody came and gave you money once, that now all of a sudden, automatically you have a loyal customer that's going to come back, that's going to refer you, and that's just not the case. In fact, just because they gave you

money once, that doesn't mean you have a relationship. It's your job to now, once they come in, and once they give you money once, now it's your job to create a relationship built on trust, built on confidence so that they keep coming back and they send their friends. And so do you want me to kind of go through some of the steps of how you would do that? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So let's just use like a company like yours. All right. So you sell garage doors or you sell HVAC or like my clients that sell windows. Okay. The job is done. Okay. Ideally, when the job is completed, somebody is there at the day of completion to walk through,

to re-engage with that customer customer to really kind of make sure that everything was done properly and that customer is thrilled thrilled not just satisfied satisfied customers to me are a liability you need thrilled raving fans that's what you want to create so then once that's done and by the way you can use this meeting if you set it up properly to get reviews you want to create. So then once that's done, and by the way, you can use this meeting, if you set it up properly to get reviews, you want to drive reviews, particularly Google reviews online. You can use that meeting to ask for introductions to other people that they might know. You can use that meeting to assess what future needs they

might have. But you only earn the right to have those conversations after you've created a raving fan. So then after that, and this is where this is like some of the stuff that we do, is we send a gift to that customer. So when you leave a job, whether it's, you know, five minutes or five hours or five days, that customer is going to forget about you unless you do something to remind them. So we show up about a week later for our clients. We send out a thank you. And it's anything from, you know, a thank you card to a gift box. And we say thank you again. We really appreciate you. And it's not so much about what's inside. It's really all about the gesture, right? Because nobody says thank you. Nobody. I mean, very few companies say thank you. I actually got, I bought a new car and I got a thank you, but it was not personalized at all.

And it wasn't from my salesperson. It wasn't from my dealership. It was actually from the manufacturer. And then I just hired a new wealth advisor and he sent us this nice basket of stuff. But most companies don't do it, but the ones that do are the ones that you're going to remember and that you're going to talk about. And then you before mentioned email marketing. We do a ton of email marketing,

but I don't only rely on email marketing. I also do direct mail. And what I do is I'm a big believer in newsletters. I first learned about newsletters like 20 something years ago. And so we do electronic newsletters to stay in touch. And by the way, it's not all about garages. It's not all about windows. People don't give a crap about that stuff. We want to engage them with inspiration, with ideas for their home, with a recipe, right? And we do that both in digital through email, but we also do that through direct mail. And so those are just some of the things that you do to build relationship.

That's what relationship marketing is. You mentioned earlier that guy you talked about that went back to his past customers. There's a gold mine there, right? But had he set it up right from the beginning, how much more money would he be making now? And yeah, no. And then I think there's a lot to be said about automation. I mean, pulling from a CRM, doing email marketing, text messaging. When you haven't signed an invoice, you could be compliant in there that they're accepting them to text message. to go through it and I want the listeners to kind of understand a little bit here of what our goal is. And I want to ask you some good questions because that's something I've been working on now for a while. So complete the easy tasks and save big. A Facebook like if you have an account, a next door recommendation, a yard sign up for 60 days, a Yelp, Google, Facebook, or BBB review, free referrals, done post after install, and take a photo with my new door. And we're also going to get a video testimonial.

Nice. And we leave the survey with the customer. It says, when you recall, were you treated politely on the phone? Did the salesman show up when they promised? Was the salesman courteous when he looked at your home? Were all your questions answered? But I got a whole other one that talks about the install that. So, Hey, Tommy, Tommy, let me ask you a question. That survey, you leave it behind.

Do you expect them to fill it out and return it to you? So here's the deal. This is the survey. You go over this one and you leave the other survey. You want them to fill out when the install happens. Then the salesman says, now there's a question I have to follow up with this. The salesman says, Mr. Jones, what I'd like to do is come back a week after and go through everything with you. And I want to make sure to check it out. It's basically a site check to make sure everything's working properly and you're a satisfied, raving, thrilled fan. And what I want to do is just go over a few more things and lubricate, teach you how to lubricate your door. We're going to show you how to maintain it.

We're going to talk about the service agreement you have with us. And then I'm going to, I'm probably going to have some free stuff for you. So, you know, so we come out with a surge protector, an operator bracket, a parking assist, which I'm getting 10,000 of these things made. Just cheap gifts that people really enjoy and the thought behind them. And it doesn't cost us much. We'll leave a can of branded lubrication so they can maintain

their door. But the big thing is, is that we're going to walk you through the process to leave the reviews. And we also tell the customer, just so you know, Mr. Jones, this is my cell phone number. I want you to receive five out of five service because there's five stars on Yelp, five stars on Google, right? Five stars on Facebook. I want you to receive five star service. And if anything falls below five stars, we consider that unacceptable. And I want you to reach out to me personally. So then the salesman goes back there. We give them the stuff. We go through the process.

We get, boom, we syndicate this stuff. We got an RSS feed that goes right onto the website. He builds a three ring binder full of customers that are happy as heck. So he could show them the before and after pictures while he's in their neighborhood. Hey, I've worked with someone in your neighborhood. My CRM tells us all the neighbors that we work with in this neighborhood, if you want to drive by their house, I mean, but it's an expense, right? I mean, literally this isn't, this isn't going to happen for free. But what I found was a lot of people that I can tell everybody my secret and show them how to do it, but they don't

implement it. That's right. Tell me a little bit about, and this is the thing that this is my main question for you, because it sounds like you've and this is the thing, this is my main question for you, because it sounds like you've done this, is when you do this program, do you have a salesman go back or do you have someone that specializes? And what I was thinking is a nice young lady who knows social media, who could help people guide through it. And that she goes and looks at everything, smiles all day, takes good pictures. And she's just a bubbly person that you could get along with. And she goes and talks about the sign. It gets, you know, cause you got to make sure that the women are makeup ready for pictures and all that. So, and she specializes in it.

She's good in her whole structure is based on getting referrals, reviews, Yelps, Googles, yard signs, next door recommendations. So would you say send a salesman back or send the person that just specializes in this? So ideally, you want to send back the person that they bought from. Okay. In a lot of cases, that's not going to be practical. So what you just suggested there is really good. There's a third option, which is kind of a hybrid, and that is the salesperson that you have,

that's just has a great personality. People love him or her, but they just can't close the sale. And so their numbers aren't good. You use, instead of getting rid of them, you put them into this role. But Tommy, again, can I go back for a minute? Because you just flew through that whole thing that you guys are going to do at your company. And really, the listener, there's nothing there that Tommy said that you couldn't do yourself. And what he's doing is, it goes back to what we were talking about before with customer experience. You have to set yourself apart from everybody else, not only with the garage door people or the window people or whoever, but with everybody they've ever done business with before. You need to completely and totally stand out. And that whole system that you just ran through will set your company so far apart from everybody else. They'll forget about everybody

else in two seconds, but they won't forget about you guys. And then the other thing was you mentioned the money, that there's an expense there. Well, if you have an additional expense, so if you want to do something that's just going to blow away the customer's experience, just using that as an example. So your overhead is going to go up. What do you do to pay for that? Because it comes from one or two places. See, in my mind, you know, I guess I don't understand exactly what you're asking, but I would tell you this, this program, once it's implemented, it pays for itself times,

it's the best ROI. Times 10. Times 10. At least times 10. Because here's the deal, you get this program going solid for one year. Not only do you have video testimonials on YouTube and on your website and you've got before and afters. So you've got the videos, you've got the pictures, you've got literally, you could transpose this stuff, which means you've got new content and articles with keywords on it. Always generate new content, which Google loves. On top of that, you've got yard signs of validity within the neighborhood and they've seen your trucks three times. And then you've got Facebook, which I'm getting so many leads off Facebook because the whole time of the

buying decision has changed. More millennials bought houses than baby boomers last year. So I just say that this to me would would it be an increase in marketing dollars? But what I would do is I know for a fact, the cost per the ROI and the marketing dollars, look, some campaigns I'm at 32% of revenue. There's other ones where I'm at zero. I mean, literally it's a small percentage because of our SEO and referral business.

But I mean, I guess I want you to clarify what you were going to say. Well, my point kind of was, well, one is because you said a lot of people look at that and say, well, that sounds expensive or that's going to cost me money. Well, number one, you know your numbers. So you understand that first off you're confident it's going to give you ROI, but let's just say, how are you going to measure that? Well, you know your numbers, so you're going to know how to measure that. Let's say the other piece that I was getting to was, if you're going to add something, if you're going to add overhead to your business, and this is a huge mistake that contractors make, you're going to add overhead to your business. So, the cost of goods sold has gone up, you got to raise your price to save your

margin because you're in business to make money. So if you're afraid that this is an expense, that this is a cost to do all of these things, then you got to raise your prices. And then you got to be worth more money. And by delivering a better customer experience, by instilling trust and confidence, you're worth more money. That was kind of my point was. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. You raise your price. I knew your, I know what your answer would be is if your overhead goes up, if your marketing costs go up, what are you going to do? You have to raise your prices because you know what your margin has to be in your business at the end, your bottom net profit margin at the end. You know, when we talk about this stuff, Brandon, I think the hardest thing for an entrepreneur is implementing and keeping it

implemented because we get these fancy ideas and then all of a sudden it kind of gets tossed to the side and it happens to all of us because let me just tell you, we're not just rolling out this program. I mean, we've got some big initiations. I mean, we've got our top five board of Trello. So we focus on top five things that's going to affect the company the most. This one has just got moved into our top five. Yeah. But the difference is, is it going to stay? Is it going to last? And I'll tell you what, we've done a pretty darn good job of keeping them lasting. And I just grabbed a book off the shelf. It's called Raving Fans, A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. I just want to read just a little bit of this just right here. It says, your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low because no one else is doing better. Just having

satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans. And this was just a simple, easy read. I mean, it's a hundred pages. It's huge font. I flew through this thing and on a two hour plane ride, but what it does, it talks about a guy when he goes shopping, and he says, why does everybody pay so much more when they go to that store? And he goes, well, let's go to that store. And he's got this guardian angel, and it's just this cool story. But every time –

Great book. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And it just says the customer service. They walk your bags out. They just – people pay more for that stuff. And a lot of people do, you know, there's a reason why Walmart's around, but there's also a reason why Target does so well. And there's a reason why there's those local, I mean, what's another place like Target that's even more expensive? Like, you know, those little organic

shops everywhere there's. Yeah. Well, but then there's also Nordstrom, there's Saks, there's Neiman Marcus, right? Yeah. I mean, they're better customer service for sure. Yeah. So I think that this program, if there's one thing, I mean, this is powerful stuff because building a program where you can go back and I, I don't know if you need to do it on service calls. If you're, if you're a plumber and you fix a pipe, you can't have someone going back to every service call. No, but we have a strategy for that too, though. Okay, you can't do that, Brian.

I can't do what? You can't just, you got to give us a strategy. You don't have to give us all the secrets, but you got to share some of it. So what we do with every single, whether it's a service call or it's a job, everybody gets a thank you. And we've got a response mechanism inside of the thank you that's designed to get them to come back as quickly as possible. So you got to have something in place and also to ask for reviews and all of that

as well. But yeah, you can't physically send somebody back, but there are other ways of doing it. You can do it through phone calls. You know, you can call people the next day. My handyman company, I mean, we used to do, I don't know how many jobs we did a day, 20, 30, 40 jobs a day. Every single one of those people the next day would get a phone call. Every single one, we called it a happy call. You know, there's all kinds of stuff that you can do. You just got to be creative and think it through or talk to smart people like Tommy and see what they're doing and just copy that. Yeah. You know, it's kind of funny. I got an idea that we're kind of implementing. We're playing around with it. But I wrote a really, really kind of nice letter, personal letter to a customer. And as I was writing it, I's like, well, she'd write letters for really cheap. And she's like, look, she's like,

it's your words. And she's like, the fact that it's handwritten just means so much more. And I'm like, you know what? I wouldn't mind trying that out. So they're coming in, we're working on some stuff, but I'm like, I need, if you could do this for me, I want to know about the customer, what I'd like to do. I can't do it with every customer, but if I could do it at 5%, basically, I want you to use my words and then you use your handwriting because I could talk a lot faster. Right. So, you know, there's a lot of things that I've noticed. And one of the

companies that I follow a lot of that I'm sure you're familiar with is I watch what Anderson's Renewal does. Oh yeah. I look at their marketing campaign. I work with some of those guys. Yeah. I imagined you would have, because it sounds like some of the stuff that, uh, no one's doing this in the garage door industry. Not, not a lot of plumbers and HVAC guys are doing this. Some of them are doing them on $10,000 plus units. Not a lot of people are doing this for chimney. And because they, I at them and that even the huge companies I mean I see them with like five reviews and it's it's coming to fruition now because what's happening is Alexa Google Siri all these different things are who you're gonna be talking to to get services and you're gonna say I don't

want to do it in here because something's gonna probably talk to me back because we got all these devices good You know, you're going to ask them, hey, send me the best garage door guy for 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Yeah. And it's going to happen. I mean, it's there. Trust me. We're actually getting our company doing some coding so we could talk to them. And the only other business that's done it so far in the home service niche is HomeAdvisor. We're pretty excited to be the second company kind of modernizing some of the business that's going to be coming and some of the Amazon stuff. But, you know, I've talked to you a lot right now. I want to just, there's so many, Brian, this is so interesting because there's, there's literally gold nuggets in some of the stuff we've

talked about. And I don't think people need to try to implement all these things. I just think it's crazy. I think what they need to do, and I want to hear your take on this. You know, let's take one more thing because we got a little, do you got a few more minutes? Sure. I want to talk a little bit. The number one problem, this is by far, is the unemployment rate super low right now. I mean, the economy's booming, everybody's busy. How do you find good people? Because I want these people out there, the listeners to listen and understand

that there's a lot of things you need to do, but start with the biggest one that'll impact the business. So I hear this every day, all day, Tommy, I just can't find good employees. So tell me your take on that and if you've got a good way of doing that. So I'm not a good person to ask about this because A, I purposely don't

have, I'm purposely in a business that does not require a lot of on the ground employees. However, I work with a lot of companies that need people desperately. And some of the things that they have been doing is, one, you have to treat your recruiting the same way that you treat your marketing. Meaning, you're putting ads out there, you're driving them to an inbound person that's well-scripted, that sells them on the idea of coming in for an interview. You've got to always be on the, everywhere you go, I've got clients that have cards that they give out if you're looking for a new opportunity.

And they'll pass them out to people that they meet that just they ran into that has a good personality. And they'll say, hey, if you're looking for a new opportunity here, call this number. But it's like, you know, what you focus on expands and your results are going to follow your focus. If you're focused on growing people, your people, you're going to start to see people in your everyday life that may be good candidates. So you've just got to be kind of on the lookout. I hope that helps, but you know, I... No, it's great, Brian. No, you're great. You are so good at this stuff and you deal with so many companies. It's just, you don't have to be the master of everything. You just know what your good companies are doing well. And I think keeping your eyes open because number one, you're not going to find somebody on the unemployment market. You need to go steal them. I don't care if you steal them from the quick trip gas station,

or you go find a cool bus boy that seems to be smiling and busting his butt. But having that card on you, I hand out business cards every single day, but I like the idea of a referral card to say, look, here's what we give. Here's what we can do. And here's a recruiting card. It's a really, it's what it is, is a recruiting card. And I've taken so far so many fricking notes. By the way, Hey, Tommy, by the way, you want to look at a really good example of this. So look at a company called Reborn Cabinets in Southern California. Look at what they're doing. It's amazing. I mean, they've got their main websites that's all about driving leads into their business for bathrooms

and for kitchens and all of the stuff that they do. But they've put in just as much time and effort and energy into their recruiting site. They've got videos there. They've got lead capture forms there. I mean, you'll be impressed. Go take a look at it and you'll get a ton of ideas from it. So I've got a website that I use for recruiting called work, the number four, a one, and I've got recruiting videos. I've got, here we go. Yep. Okay. It's probably not as good as reborn, but I've got some pretty cool things of why you should work here. You've got, but the point is you got something. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're focused. It's gotta be something. You got it. The thing is, is that you're always

looking and you're always thinking about top grading. You know, I talked to a guy in Michigan the other day and he used to own the franchise for Anderson's super cool guy, Brian McGraw. And he, uh, he said, Tommy, it's really hard in this market right now. Cause I, he's helping me out with a license thing to get through Google because I do not want to fly out to Michigan and have to get a full-blown contractor's license, which takes about six months. So I'm operating for Google only. There's only one company on the Google Guarantee Program. I'll be number two there. But long story short, we were talking and he goes, let me give you one piece of advice, Tommy. I said, I'm all ears. I

mean, this guy's been through the ringer. I'm going to take his advice anytime I can. He goes, remember retention. That's all I got to say. And I said, no, no, no, clarify. He goes, retain your top people. He goes, the biggest mistake I've seen at Anderson's and every other company that I've done business with is they start losing their top people. They start saying, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to, but hold on to your top 10, if anything, especially in the sales department. I mean, everybody, you want to have a great general manager. And I see people going through managers all the time that it's so bad.

I mean, there's some companies that I'm like, how are they still in business? They have so much turnover. Yeah. And that's one thing is retention's huge. So let me ask you, Brian, tell us every way I can get ahold of you. And I already know, I want them to check out The Wealthy Contractor. There's a lot of great interviews on there. So I know, check out The Wealthy Contractor podcast.

Tell me a little bit else, what I could do to get ahold of you and exactly what kind of services you could help me with. Well, I little bit else, what I could do to get a hold of you and exactly what kind of services you could help me with. Well, I think the best thing for anybody to do is just go to our website, our main website, which is G4 Marketing, but the four is spelled out. So it's G-F-O-U-R marketing.com. You can Google my name, you'll find it there as well. But essentially what we do with companies, both, you know, remodeling and home improvement and home service companies, is we just help them stay sticky with their customers. How do we get their customers to

give them more reviews, get more referrals, and get more repeat business. And also, we help them reactivate old customers too. So, like you mentioned earlier, you know, in this conversation, that guy that, you know, went after his past customers, we do that for our clients as well. Brilliant. And if you could just give me a couple of books that you would recommend. I don't care if it has to do particularly with the home service nature, just something smart business-wise or marketing. Is there anything that really comes to mind when I mention a book that you would recommend? So I'm going to recommend a book that I recommended to one of my oldest friends. He just started a new job and it's a self-help book.

And I think it is absolutely fantastic. I'm a big self-help guy. I've been studying self-help for going on almost 30 years. I've seen a lot. But there's a book called You Are a Badass that I just think is a fantastic, fantastic book. And then the other book I would look at, well, there are one of two, you got to make money right now. If you're not making money today in your business, you never will. Right, Tommy,

you'll make money. If you can't make money today, you're never making money. So I would say if you're not going to change it, get out because you're making it bad for the rest of us. But if you really are serious about making money, go look at a book called Profit First. You probably know. Yeah, I had my podcast. That book is amazing. Yeah, that's my podcast. That book is amazing. Yeah, that's a great book. And you know what's another great book? Is a book called Simple Numbers by a guy named Greg Crabtree.

Books about mindset and books about profit. I love that. This is all good stuff. So what I'd like to do, Brian, is just kind of end the podcast with maybe just a final thought, maybe something we didn't cover. You kind of want to leave with the listeners. You know, I always learn a lot, even just listening to the stuff that you were talking about and what's going on in your business. And my big thing, like with the wealthy contractor is, man, you're not alone. Don't try and do everything on your own. There's so many good resources out there like Tommy's podcast, my podcast, other people's

stuff. I would just say, don't go at this alone. If you really want to grow, if you really want to create a business that's going to absolutely fund your lifestyle and make you and your family wealthy, whatever that means to you, don't try and figure it out on your own. Go read books, go to seminars, listen to podcasts, you know, seek out people that can help take you to the next level. This is amazing. I feel like we covered so many good things today. So I really appreciate it, Brian. Thanks for having me, Tommy. I ordered your book. Unfortunately, some of the times I

order books while I'm on the podcast, just so I make sure I do it. So yours is ordered. I just ordered simple numbers. I have the other one, Profit First, great book. So thank you so much for coming on. I want to stay after and talk to you for a minute, but it was great. And thank you again for everything. My pleasure. Thank you, Tommy. Hey guys, I just wanted to say thank you for listening to the podcast. And I wanted to talk real quick about the new book I have coming out in November. It's called the home service millionaire. And I discuss everything it takes to hire the right people, train your salespeople, how to get tax breaks. It talks about how to sell your company for the most amount of money.

We've got a lot of great contributorships coming on. Everybody from Paul Akers about how to go lean to how you do sales from enterprise, how to get the best write-offs in the industry and save a ton on taxes and actually make your company look more professional. I got the CEO of Service Titan. I got the CEO of Valpak. We've got great people on here that know everything there is to know about marketing and Google. And there's basically no secrets we left

out of this book. Literally, there's people that have read it so far say, I cannot believe you're giving all this information away. And the reason I did that is I just feel like you guys could just take each one of these gold nuggets and run with them. I mean, the ultimate goal of the book is to make sure that everybody is successful and makes money. If I could contribute to your lives, then that would be amazing.

And I feel like it's the least I could do. And I really appreciate you listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoy the book. Go to Homeservice Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com and pre-order your book today. Thank you.